A Zentangle Illustration for Clara

A dear friend of mine and his wife had a baby girl in the summer (their first!) and, as a gift, I commissioned my wonderful artist-mother, Margaret Bremner, to do a frame-able (8 × 10), zentangle-inspired illustration for her. I made a few requests: that it be her name (“Clara”), that it have blues and greens as the major color scheme, and that it have some elements that looked botanical and organic. Mama triumphed:

I began with an acrylic wash in three colors. For the letters I used cardboard cut-out scrapbooking letters as stencils. Then I did a pencil string over the entire thing and went at it with pens in various colors. I finished with pencil shading in various colors and a bit of white and pale blue on the letters.

It was finished a little while ago, and I finally managed to send it off in the mail last week. It was received today….